Burden of Proof

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0:38We met in ninth grade. There were a lot of good times. We had the same dreams and the same goals. She was a good mother, and I believe she was a good wife. Her heart was just so big, and she had a wonderful laugh. It was like the best laugh. She was the most kind person that I had ever met in my life. She was the best friend a person could ever have. A typical marriage, they had verbal fights like every other marriage. We had our ups and downs. We separated several times in our marriage. But we always got back together. It was customary for them to fight. It was customary for them to have problems.

1:18Usually when we did argue, one of us would leave and cool off. I've never seen him lose his temper. He just turns around and walks away. People don't quite understand exactly how controlling he was. He stopped her. He called her. He knew where she was. She was scared. I would never hurt Beverly or harm Beverly in any way. She had been out with a friend of hers. She got back home sometime around midnight. Then she got mad because I called one of her friends to see where she was. She had grabbed her purse and her keys, and when she did, I grabbed her arm, told her she didn't need to leave. She threw her keys at me and told me that she didn't need her keys to leave the house, and that was the last time I saw her.

2:10Beverly Watson disappeared from the Watson home in the early morning hours of January the 18th of 1997. She said, if anything ever happens to me, you tell them that Jim did it. And he told her that he would put her body somewhere where nobody would ever find it. Burden of proof.

2:41Harold Dow:It was three years ago in 2002. Graduating finally, thank God. My black shoes downstairs. I hope I don't fall. When Ashley Watson graduated from high school near Atlanta. Ashley Lane Watson. Her proud father was by her side. So was her brother, Todd. But someone was missing. Sorry that your mom wasn't there to see it. Yeah. I was sad, but I felt like I had a part of her with me. Thank you. and that she was looking down. So I just kept that with me. Tell us about your mom. She had a very loving side to her. Her heart was just so big. And she had a wonderful laugh. It was like the best laugh. In 1997, when Ashley was only 12 years old, her mother, Beverly Watson, a bookkeeper at a local country club, vanished into the night.

3:38Harold Dow:Did you ever think she was coming back home? I did. It's hard to believe and you don't want to believe that something wrong happened to your mom and that she's not coming back. So I definitely held out hope. Her father, Jim Watson, a part-time police officer who owns a locksmith business, was left to raise Ashley and Todd on his own. I never thought that I would be in a situation like this. It has completely changed not only my life but my children's life.

4:11Your whole world's changed, and it will never be the same. He's a great dad. He's real involved in my life. There's dad. I played and dad coached. And we're on my way up here. We have a really great relationship. We're very honest with each other. Dad gave me this one. He has a big heart.

4:32Harold Dow:Jim Watson seemed to be a loving father. But was he a good husband? The Watsons had a rocky marriage. and after 14 years, Beverly decided to leave Jim and take the children. On the last night she was seen alive, Jim wanted to talk about their problems, but Beverly didn't want to hear it. Instead, she went to see her lifelong friend, Debbie White. She was apologizing for just showing up at my house, and I said, Beverly, you don't have to apologize to me. I said, you can come to me anytime. I'll always be here for you. It was bitterly cold that Friday night. only 18 degrees. The women went to a nearby Wendy's to eat and talk, and Beverly did not get home until midnight.

5:18And that's the last time I saw or heard from her.

5:22Harold Dow:Back home, Jim Watson was waiting, and as soon as Beverly walked in the door, he says they began arguing. She got mad. She just closed the cabinet door kind of hard, then went and got her car keys and her purse and tried to leave at the garage door. When I stopped her from going, she threw her car keys at me and told me that she didn't need her car keys to leave. He says he heard her leave out the front door. He never saw her again. He never saw her again. Jim says he thought Beverly had gone to cool off at a friend's house. He let the weekend pass, but on Monday, he told his children their mother was missing.

6:06I was in so much shock that, I mean, it was hard to believe.

6:10Harold Dow:And then Jim called police. Was he cooperative with you? Yeah, that night he was. Major Bruce Jordan of the Fayette County Sheriff's Department says that Jim allowed police to search his house without a warrant. There were no traces of blood, nothing incriminating was found, but Jordan noticed something that startled him. Jim was wearing makeup. When you confronted him about the makeup, what did he say? He just said, oh, that's just some redness I had that I covered up. And I said, well, let's go inside and wash it off. And when we washed it off, it was obviously, to me, fingernail scratches. And then there was something else, a strange layer of fine dust on Beverly's car, first noticed by Ashley.

6:54Harold Dow:We were in the garage, and the girl came out, and she said, why is Mom's car so dirty? What happened to it? And then we all looked and realized it was covered in a layer of dust. Police preserved the dust, but didn't know what to make of it. I was frantic. I was absolutely beside myself. And then Beverly's friends, one by one, began calling with the same chilling conclusion. Beverly was dead. They knew who killed her. And they knew he thought it was the perfect crime. I don't think any of us had a doubt that something terrible had happened. She said, if anything ever happens to me, you tell them that Jim did it.

7:35Harold Dow:Do you think she knew she was going to die? I think she did in some ways, which is, it's so sad. I think people don't quite understand exactly how controlling he was. From the time Beverly woke up in the morning, she couldn't go to the bathroom by herself without him being there. He called her from the time she left the house. He called her all day at work. He knew every move she made. If he didn't like a particular type of clothing that Beverly wore, it disappeared. When Miracle Bras came out, he cut the padding out of her bras. Who was she trying to impress? Who was she trying to look good for?

8:11That is not normal. He tried to control every aspect of her life, everything.

8:18Harold Dow:Jim Watson became the prime suspect. Jim, let's play it online. Did you kill your wife? No, I did not. Why should anyone believe you didn't kill your wife? I would never hurt Beverly or harm Beverly in any way. Beverly has been my best friend for many years. She was the mother of our two children, and I would have never done any harm to her. You suspected Jim Watson from the beginning, but you never arrested him. Why not? The problem in Georgia with a homicide is it's difficult to get a conviction without a body.

8:54Harold Dow:And that was the real problem. Despite everyone's suspicions, there was virtually no evidence. There was no witness, no body, no proof that Beverly was even dead. In short, there was no case. Domestics are complicated because they're usually almost always circumstantial, and that is because murder is not a spectator sport. Prosecutor Sheila Ross says pursuing a wife killer is always tough. Jim Watson is not going to go out into his street and say, hey, neighbors, why don't you come into my home and watch me while I kill my wife? The domestic killer has a distinct advantage over a stranger on stranger homicide because they can kill in the privacy of their own home.

9:36People like that are far worse than killers who pick total strangers because they're violating that trust. They're stealing the mother from their children. And there is a special place in hell for men who kill their wives.

9:54Harold Dow:But no matter what anyone thinks of her father, Ashley says they're all wrong. She is not living with her mother's killer. You've stood behind your dad all the way. Mm-hmm. Why? Because I know he didn't do anything. And it's so frustrating to hear all these people who don't even know him just point a finger at him. And I think that's made me just stay, I mean, right by his side to let him know that, you know, hey, I love you and I do believe you. How can you be so sure that your dad had absolutely nothing to do with your mom's disappearance? Because in those 12 years, I've never seen any sort of physical abuse.

10:36Harold Dow:What keeps you going? There's this cloud of suspicion hanging over your head. The fact that I know that I'm innocent. Don't push me all the way out there. And the fact that I have two children. They need their father around. So who is Jim Watson? A devoted dad? He's a great dad. A calculating killer? Jim Watson is a wife killer. A typical, spineless wife killer. Or both.

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11:45He would drive through the parking lot slow, writing down the descriptions of our undercover cars so he would know when we were following him. I've never encountered a homicide suspect with the confidence that he had to just flaunt it in your face.

11:59Harold Dow:Major Bruce Jordan was sure Jim Watson had killed his wife, Beverly. But without any proof, he was forced to play a cat and mouse game with Watson. He's a tit-for-tat kind of guy. When we started following him, he would find my family at night and follow us. And he would come to my daughter's softball games and stand there and stare at my daughter while she played softball. But the sad story of Beverly Watson remained a missing persons case. Flyers were handed out. We're friends of Beverly Watson. Vigils were held. It helps us keep her and our hearts in mind. But she didn't turn up. A year went by, then two, and still Beverly's daughter Ashley held out hope.

12:42Harold Dow:I noticed you have a ring around your neck. Yeah, that's her engagement ring. My dad gave it to me probably about a year after she left just to kind of, you know, give a part of her to me, you know, keep a memory alive. What about your brother? How has all this affected him? He was six when she left and that's incredibly young. I think a lot of it goes over his head. Same with me. I mean, a lot of stuff still just doesn't seem, you know, like it actually happened to us. But it did happen to the Watson family. And two years after her mother's disappearance, a surveyor stumbles across a skull in the woods, 20 miles from the Watson home.

13:23Harold Dow:Tests prove it was Beverly's. It was kind of a kick in the face, like, she's not coming back now. Nothing could be changed after that point. You know, she was gone. She's not coming back. Okay. Is it good? Yeah. I always go to my crime scene. And this is 32 feet? Apart. Yeah. I think that you cannot adequately understand what happened to the victim if you don't go to the last place that they were alive. In this case, she was probably dead when she got here. Your search was here, and this is where all the remains were found. For prosecutor Sheila Ross... You search beyond the stream, right? Yes.

13:56Harold Dow:The discovery of Beverly's remains is a major break in the case. She laid out here for two years, waiting to be found here in this area. Police search the dense undergrowth off Red Mill Road and find 12 bones total. So the leg bones were closer to the stream. All that remains of the once vibrant mother of two. Not only was she killed and her life snubbed out when she was a very young woman and she was deprived of the right to see her children grow old, but then he dumps her out here where she's literally just ripped apart by animals. And Red Mill Road yields yet another important clue. Remember the layer of fine dust covering Beverly's car the day Jim reported her missing?

14:41Harold Dow:It looks very much like the dust on Red Mill Road, a road that Ross believes leads straight back to Jim Watson. Now we can get some answers and some closure to what has happened over two years ago. But the discovery of Beverly's bones provides almost no new answers. Beverly's cause of death is ruled undetermined, and the case against Jim Watson remains shaky. What we have working against us is no physical evidence linking him to the scene. Also, no known cause of death. But that isn't about to stop Sheila Ross. Why don't you tell that dear citizen to eat crow? 32 and divorced, Ross learned at an early age how to fight for what she wants.

15:27Harold Dow:She's one of five sisters raised by a divorced mother who worked nights. My father moved out of state, so she had to work and she had to work at night and she did not have childcare. And my mother did her best to raise us and keep us out of trouble. Sheila is one of those individuals who, when you give it to her, she's going to go line by line by line. Fulton County Detective Frank Martin is helping Ross with the investigation. She's not going to miss anything and she's going to drive you. She has the energy to make everybody around her get up and go and go and go. That's why she's known as Sheila the Shark.

16:02Harold Dow:You know they have a little nickname for you around the office. I've heard that. What do you think? I don't like it. You don't like it? No. But it's okay to be tough as a prosecutor. I think it's necessary to be tough as a prosecutor. Sheila Ross is such a firecracker. I love that woman, and I think that she's going to be the end of Jim Watson. Mandy Dunn, Beverly's niece, and Scott Bennett, Beverly's brother, are relying on Ross for justice. But it's hard to be patient. I've begged the authorities for five minutes alone with them. Because I think the boy needs some of what he did to Beverly. What would you say to Jim if you were still talking to him?

16:44Hide. Run and hide. We're going about this legally. We're giving the authorities their chance to take care of things. But there's enough people out there that have expressed strong desire to hurt the boy. So my advice to him is hide.

17:00Harold Dow:Other than that, I have nothing to say to him. Caught in the middle of this blood feud are Ashley and Todd, who want nothing to do with their mother's family. I want everyone to know that I am ashamed of them. I don't like them at all. I mean, basically I do. I hate them. I wish that they would stop playing the media to think that they're good people and that they try and look out for us and that Dad is this bad guy who shields us from him because he's not. We understand why Ashley is having bitter feelings towards us. She's lost her mother, and now we're going to take her father away from her.

17:34Good luck. But again, it's the best thing for her.

17:38Harold Dow:Sheila Ross is determined to do the best thing for Beverly. Nearly five years to the day that she disappeared, Ross takes the case to a Fulton County grand jury. We could have been too afraid to try to bring the man to justice and sit in the corner and let him get away with killing his wife, or we could try. We chose to try. And the grand jury indicts Jim Watson for the murder of his wife. Ball's in our court now. He's had his time. Quite frankly, he was given an additional five years to live. longer than Beverly was. But Watson insists he's innocent and in a show of good faith agrees to a videotaped interview with Detective Martin without his lawyer.

18:22Harold Dow:I didn't hit her. I didn't knock her down. I didn't push her down. I didn't do anything to her that night. I spoke with him for approximately two, two and a half hours and I could see fear in his eyes. Were you upset that night and did you kill her? I did not kill her. I could not see any sincerity in his eyes. I'm not really upset. I was ticked off. I am not an evil person. I'm not a bad person. I have always done what I thought was right, and no matter what I do in life. I've tried a lot of murder cases in my career, and I've never tried one without evidence of murder. Lee Sexton is Jim Watson's attorney.

18:59I don't know that anyone killed Beverly Watson. Based on the medical reports, we don't know that Beverly had a heart attack. We don't know that she was walking down the roadway and was struck by a vehicle and knocked into the woods. And we certainly don't know if someone else abducted Beverly and killed her and left her body in the woods. The state's going to attempt to get a jury to speculate him into being a convicted murderer and speculate him into the rest of his life in a penitentiary. That's not the way we do law in the United States. We require proof, and there's not any.

19:29Harold Dow:Sexton gets Watson freed on a$100 ,000 cash bail and applies for a speedy trial so Jim can get on with his life. It's a tough homicide. There's no doubt about it. I anticipate an absolute dogfight. And Ashley will be in the middle of it. She will take the stand to defend her father. It's very intimidating, but I'm also very anxious to get it over with and to get out the truth. At the 11th hour, Sexton tries to knock out the heart of the state's case. He says everything Beverly told her friends is hearsay. She said, if anything ever happens to me, you tell them that Jim did it. He was in trial for this one.

20:10Harold Dow:If the judge rules in favor of the defense, Sheila Ross will have to prove murder with her only evidence being scratches on Watson's face and dust on Beverly's car. How would you describe the state's case against Jim Watson? the weakest I have ever seen in all of my years of practice. We're trying to get justice for Beverly, justice that she has been denied for five years. If the jury chooses to let him go, it's blood on their hands. We've decided we're going to try.

20:44I knew y 'all would get together.

20:49Harold Dow:Tomorrow, Jim Watson stands trial for killing his wife, Beverly. He didn't do it. It's totally out of character from Jim. Jim's a mild-mannered, easy-going. But today... Well, we're having a little party for Jim and his family. We thought it'd be good to bring them all together, let everybody have a little fun and eat some hot dogs and some hamburgers at a Louie Louie Louie. Larry and Lynn Elzey... Jim is a friend, an honest friend, a true friend. ...want Jim to know that his friends and family stand by him. I'll be there giving him my support.

21:27Harold Dow:This is Jim's day of reckoning. We don't want a hung jury. We don't want a mistrial. We want an acquittal. He could spend the rest of his life in prison, but he says he's not worried. I am innocent, and I'd like for everyone else to know that I'm innocent. But before the trial begins... Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Please be seated. Judge T. Jackson Bedford makes a decision crucial to the prosecution's case. The testimony as to what Debbie White, Krista Hinkle, and Ellen Lord heard Beverly Watson say is admissible. The hearsay testimony will be admitted. It's a major victory for Prosecutor Sheila Ross, who opens her case with a parade of Beverly's friends and co-workers.